The cat came back — after months of searching

Searches for lost cats are more often futile, and who cries for the wildlife it killed?

An Ithaca woman's prodigal cat proved to be nearly as elusive as the Ivory-billed woodpecker.

Lost in April 2006, Junior is finally back home in the West Hill area. It proved an exhausting process for his human, Kat Dalton, who designs “Living Bird” magazine for the Lab of Ornithology along with other graphic design and photography work.

Junior, named after a deceased look-alike tabby named Harold, was hiding under a shed in an enclosed cat yard on April 25. While Dalton and her husband, Johnny Dowd, a Texas-born singer-songwriter known more in Europe than in Ithaca for his edgy tales, were trying to coax the cat out, he bolted.

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